BOOKS IN BRIEF: NONFICTION

By Carol Peace Robins

Published: April 13, 2003

DANCING AT CIRO'S

A Family's Love, Loss and Scandal

on the Sunset Strip.

By Sheila Weller.

St. Martin's, $24.95.

Sheila Weller has written a carousel ride of a memoir, complete with ups and downs, prize brass ring and the grim silence that comes when the music suddenly stops. ''Dancing at Ciro's'' ostensibly tells her story of a fabulous Beverly Hills childhood spent as an insider at Ciro's, the dazzling Hollywood night club owned by her uncle and mother. But as interesting as anecdotes of stars and wheeler- dealers can be, and as evocative as the book is of an era of cigarette girls, the real story occurs within the family. Weller, a contributing editor at Glamour, begins at the end: when her uncle nearly murdered her father in front of her and her sister Lizzie. She then shifts to the tight Jewish enclaves of Brooklyn, where her parents and uncle began their separate journeys west. She plucks gems about Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. from her uncle Herman's unpublished memoir and quotes profusely from her mother's gossip columns (occasionally unwisely resorting to cattiness herself). The last pages are shattering in their revelation of the impact of family secrets on two vulnerable adolescent girls. ''Dancing at Ciro's'' has more than its share of dish, but its real substance lies in the heartbreaking account of a badly broken family. Carol Peace Robins